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displays performance battery life and so

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much more laptops are one of the most complicated product categories to test

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because until you can evaluate every individual part you can never hope to

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see the whole picture which is why it's taking us two years to nail down a

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comprehensive test Suite so strap in with some help from our sponsor MSI Who

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provided some test subjects for this run through and by the time we're done

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you're going to know how our Labs team can help you avoid the trp tops and find

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yourself a slap top shipments typically arrive in the afternoon which leaves us

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only a few hours to kick things off we start with a quick physical to make sure

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that what we got matches what it says on the tin and to clean out any

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pre-installed garbage like McAfee or Norton we went back and forth on this

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practice quite a bit and ultimately what we decided was that it was best for us

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to test the hardware without it being influenced by a performance sapping

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bloat and huh also sometimes it would falsely identify our mark bench

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automation software as a virus

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so now in a perfect world these are fresh from the factory but every now and

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then we'll get a review sample that's been passed around so we'll do a full

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system reset then we'll write down the default power profile before changing it

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to the most battery economical mode in this case super battery then we Chuck it

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into our 20° environmental test chamber fully charged and we go go home to

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rejuvenate our mortal shells endurance testing typically needs to run overnight

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because it can take a very long time depending on the system we use 720p

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YouTube video playback at a usable but

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fairly dim 200 nits with 100% display

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scaling and we make sure to turn off any keyboard RGB for our endurance test

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Hardware info is used for logging which we found is lightweight enough to only

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negligibly impact our tests

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then we pull it out dead as a door nail

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man this stealth 18 AI studio is smaller

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than its name especially when you factor in the core Ultra 9 185h and RTX 480 in

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here sheesh now these sponsored MSI laptops are just for demonstration

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purposes for this video we're going to be publishing our independent

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non-sponsored test results at LTT Labs.com the reason we test like this

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isn't because don't trust manufacturers I mean we don't but not necessarily

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because we think they're all liars sometimes they are but even the best

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intentioned manufacturers rarely agree with each other on how to test their

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devices and if you dig into the fine print you'll find all kinds of

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interesting choices like nigh unusable

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brightness levels disabled wireless connectivity or a battery life test

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where they do nothing but display a desktop background that's why we create

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created our own set of criteria that we feel the average person would agree

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represents sure economical but actual

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realworld use of the device we also have a second test to give you guys a range

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that looks at how well it'll handle a full stress situation on top of our

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maximum endurance test by the way in the future once we get our Pam or power

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analysis module we'd like to incorporate charge times as well as discharge times

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speaking of charging while it's getting reenergize we determine what sort of

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weight class our laptop sits in you'd think that we could do this with just

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specs but without going on a 2hour rant we can't so what we do is we pop it back

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into the Ed box performance mode and make sure that the Windows power mode is

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set to best performance for consistency sake after that we run a quick 1080p

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Total War Warhammer 3 Benchmark which uses a good mix of CPU and GPU that we

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can use to determine what tests we should bother with for example if we're

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looking at Netbook that's scores under 20 FPS or just straight up dnfs will

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focus on lighter Esports titles rather than wasting time on cyberpunk in the

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case of the Titan 18hx with an Intel Core i 94900 HX 128 GB of ddr5 memory

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and an RTX 4090 mobile GPU will be looking at numbers so high we can assume

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that Dota 2 runs fine and move on to other things it also lets us know if

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something appears to be faulty for instance we test a laptop that we think

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should be somewhere in the heavyweight or middleweight tier but ends up performing more like a featherweight

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then before we do any more rigorous testing we'll dig around and find the

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roote cost sometimes they're from storefronts like Ali Express and they

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just plain suck sometimes it's old stock with dried out thermal paste and then

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sometimes it's just a really slow laptop

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either way it gives us a really good idea of what to expect once the unit's

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recharged we'll do a couple of quick battery stress tests before moving on to

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gaming Max brightness refresh rate keyboard RGB on full blast you know

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whatever the maxed out power mode is the whites we'll hit it with prime 95 for

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CPU only devices as well as a combuster workload for a simulated gaming load on

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our gaming laptops then comes our suite of gaming benchmarks courtesy of mark

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bench this automated system runs what we call harnesses which are created on a

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perame basis using either canned benchmarks that are built into the game

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or our own custom playthroughs it gives us reliable easily graph data and what's

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cool is it can even handle some productivity tests like cinebench 2024

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and Puget benches Premier Pro and Photoshop benchmarks 3D marks storage

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test and UL proon office productivity aren't in mark bench yet but we are

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working on them and together all of these numbers give us a clear picture of

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the machine's performance both in gaming and in general usability this is all

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done with the fans running in whatever

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profile they're set to out of the box and the goal here is to record the

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typical non- tinker and user experience

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now we have observed cases where we might get a few more FPS with the

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cooling system cranked 211 but what we

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suspect is that most people want their laptop to stay firmly planted on the

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table instead of taking off and hovering though if the fans happen to creep up to

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uncomfortable levels on their own well hey that's just part of the

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manufacturer's design it's worth mentioning here that non-battery

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performance testing is currently performed out in the open in the lab not

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in the environmental chamber it's not as strictly managed but it is still a

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controlled thermal environment thanks to our Central HVAC system and it sits

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around 21 de C for an example of what

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some of our testing data might look like here's some runs on our Titan 18hx from

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MSI at 1080P 1440p and

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2400px at least in part to MSI's over boost Ultra which unlocks a whopping 270

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watts of total system power and things get even more interesting if you look at

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CPU only tasks like cine bench 2024

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without the GPU sucking up valuable resources our CPU rocketed up to 200 100

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watts of power consumption giving this machine very respectable numbers for a

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laptop chip I mean it's hard to quite achieve desktop performance in a

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portable form factor but this shows about how close we can get at what cost

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though let's head back to the environmental chamber and talk about

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heat back at the chamber after fighting with Lucas on who gets to use it for the

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day we make sure that our machine under test is plugged in for maximum

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performance and then we run it through a series of stress tests with 10-minute

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braks in between so it can cool off currently we use a set of 15minute

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thermal load tests using cinnam bench for raw CPU furmark for raw GPU and then

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both a f-120 3 loop as well as combuster

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GL msi2 physx CPU set to medium for both

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a real world as well as synthetic combined load test with that said we are

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still experimenting to determine the ideal methodology here we know that

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there are power viruses that can run the components harder but no one in the

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right mind is finding new prime numbers of a laptop so leave a like if you think

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that the current system is good or a comment if you think you have other

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ideas looking at our results modern core I9 mobile chips can get hot and our

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Titan 18hx is no exception even with its

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Vapor chamber cooling design however in modern devices that are basically

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designed to throttle the more important metric to look at is sustained clock

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speed which we report on a graph that looks like this for gamers a combined

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workload like our f123 Loop is a better representation of how the cooling system

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is going to handle a typical gaming load now one step that we'd love to add in

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the future is a set of thermal imaging shots from a Fleer camera while any

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device is at its peak thermal load this would tell us whether all the heat is SA

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sailing comfortably out of the vents at the back or whether it's being conducted

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through your poor delicate fies give us

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time though um another two years who

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knows any who speaking of with all the

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design delays not to mention permit delays our full-fledged anoa chamber is

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going to be a while so we built this quiet room as a placeholder now you guys

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know from experience that some devices can practically scream in pain as they

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try to stay cool so we're going to be using this to both test devices and

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speakers and what's cool is even in its

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current temporary State it's so quiet nobody can hear me

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scream oh that's not how it works lonus

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it is not how it works you told me I could scream in here yeah but I can hear

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you just fine uh uh look Gary Arc go my

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Ark my Ark there are still a few more things

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that we need to do to get our noise flow lower but we're currently measuring

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about 23 DB in this bad boy which is low

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enough that we can comfortably evaluate underload Acoustics for all but the

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quietest of devices our mic sits roughly

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2 feet from the screen which is about where someone would be using a laptop

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and then we look at as much of the fan noise curve as we can depending on the

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available operating modes we're not going to be actually publishing numbers

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from here yet this foam is just some temporary crap that we ordered from

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Amazon on this is garbage we're going to be replacing it and we have some work to

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do on our methodology but we're going to make an announcement once we change out

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to both the finished version of this

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chamber and the full one moving on to speakers our stelle

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studio here has a six- speaker surround sound system that's tuned by Dine Audio

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with two pairs of dual Force cancelling woofers that's a fancy way of saying

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that it should look pretty good on our testing mic speaking of looking good

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that's why our team here wears only the best merch from LTT Store.com like these

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new Labs phase hoodies next up is my favorite part

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display testing for laptops it's almost exactly the same as testing any other

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display so we hook up our stealth 18 AI Studio to the network in a darkened room

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like this one and launch calman client 3 while another laptop right here runs

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calman ultimate from portrait displays we then carefully position our cr300 and

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CR 100 colorimeters these guys measure 10% window sized color swatches to check

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for accuracy color gamut capabilities and brightness by the way you might have

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heard us say this display has an average Delta e2000 of two or three or something

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along those lines well while that's great for measuring SDR content more and

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more displays are featuring proper HDR or high dynamic range so we're in the

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middle of transitioning over to Delta eitp to paint a better picture of what

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that experience looks like anyway that whole conversation is well beyond the

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scope of this video for now testing is done in this office upstairs is where

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we've hung some black dutin and blocked the automatic light sensor with paper

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and tape this is what it looks like without any of our lights turned on

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eventually the plan is to have a full media room where we'll test displays and

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put some couches a big projector for some subjective audio evaluation as well

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Rome wasn't built in a day beyond color accuracy gamut and brightness we use an

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lat as well as an osrt to measure response time and latency whenever

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supported we take Pursuit motion photos using smooth frog to check for ghosting

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or inverse ghosting for subjective analysis and if there are local dimming

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zones most common on mini LED displays or an OLED where every pixel is a

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dimming Zone we calculate how many there are and take a look at how much Bloom

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they cause once the testing is complete we're able to spit out indecipherable

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numbers like these that some of you have asked us to explain let's use the 4K

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120hz mini LED that's on both of our demo machines to explore brightness our

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stealth 18 AI studio hit around 1,00

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nits of peak brightness in a 10% window in game gamer mode that means that you

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can expect a high contrast and Poppy HDR

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experience as dimming zones light up for flashes of light and explosions while

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other zones in darker parts of the scene stay dim the total nits value indicates

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how bright those spots are with a higher value meaning A Brighter Image it goes

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deeper than that just like color accuracy goes deeper than smaller number

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better but to learn more you're just going to have to stay tuned for a tech

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quickie MSI also wanted us to test the ultra low profile mechanical keyboard on

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the Titan 18hx but due to some setbacks we can't quite test laptop keyboards yet

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we can get an accurate scan and our robot works great now that's like 90% of

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the battle but our logging software runs

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on a separate device so that's great for Standalone keyboards but we still need

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to develop a way to set up low latency input pass through Rome built etc etc

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stay tuned same goes for our EMC Chamber from Raymond EMC we expect to be able to

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test Wi-Fi sometime in about Q3 but with

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that said Wi-Fi 6 and 6c have already been a substantial improvement over

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previous versions with stable and fast connections being pretty affordable

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these days and seven is even stronger so it's relatively safe to say that if

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you're buying a device with Wi-Fi 6 and above you're probably going to be okay

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for typical web browsing and video call use uh barring any annoying driver

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issues mediate Tech excuse me sorry

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I know this whole thing has been a long time coming and the videos on short

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circuit might not go into enough detail for some of you at least not yet but

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that is where LTT Labs.com is going to come into play the site is up it's

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getting regular content updates now and the goal is to have every product that

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comes into our warehouse go through our lab for testing to determine whether

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it's worth your hard-earned money before it makes it any further massive thanks

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to MSI for sending over these guinea pigs and for sponsoring our efforts to

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keep them honest we're going to have all the

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laptops that we showed off today Linked In the description down below as well as

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the LTT lab's website go check it out and leave some feedback for our team now

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based on MSI's usual feedback they probably want some more screen time for

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their devices so here we go whether you

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need the ultimate gaming and Engineering laptop or a portable desktop replacement

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MSI's Titan series devices have got you covered a little too much power for you

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we look no further than their r gaming laptops or for something smaller that

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still packs on major punch try the stealth 18 AI Studio complete with the

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latest meteor Lake processors from Intel you can check out all of these at the

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link in the video description thanks for watching if you guys enjoyed this video

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and you want to know more about how the lab is being utilized maybe sign up on

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Floatplane we've got an hour plus long video that goes over exactly that